At times when you want to update a workbook or worksheet to use a new data, rather than re-building the workbook using the new data, you can simply replace the old data source. Replacing the old data source redirects all fields used in the data source to map to corresponding fields in the new data source.
Replacing data source is useful in the following scenarios;
When changing to a more up to-date data if the original data cannot be updated.
Swapping in a new data sources if the original has been lost
Migrating from a test environment data to production one
Changing from a file based data source (e.g. excel) to a server based data source (e.g. SQL server)
To replace data source in Tableau
Open the workbook you need to replace a data source.
Create a new connection to the new data source you would like to use.
Under the worksheet area select Data >> Replace Data Source…
In the Replace Data Source dialogue, select your current data and replacement data, Click OK.
Note: All worksheets using the original data will be updated with the new data.
Replacing references
Sometimes when you replace data sources in Tableau – some worksheets will fail due to broken fields resulting from name mismatch and so on. Such issues can be addressed by replacing references as follows;
Right click on the field you need to replace >> Replace References….
In this case, after replacing Superstores data source with World Indicators data source – my view is broken simply because the field Sales doesn’t exist in my new data source. This can been addressed by replacing the field with right field.
In the dialogue menu, find the correct field to replace with.
Executing this replaces all references of that field with the new field.
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